That wasn’t really the end. World War II put the period on the new contract. Havas crumbled all-at-once-and-nothing-first like the wonderful one-hoss shay. Reuters’ internal crisis matured and in 1941 the agency was liquidated as a private profit-seeking body. It was reorganized as the British equivalent of A.P. Within the Empire it is struggling for survival against terrific American pressures, just as the Empire itself is creaking under American expansionist strains and the impact of the rising liberation forces released by the anti-Axis war. Sideswiped as a British government propaganda agency in a semi-official State Department document recently, Reuters indignantly denied the charge. In doing so, it acknowledged the British surrender to the American commercial-sensational news pattern which it resisted for so many years. Said Reuters chief Christopher Chancellor: “We are not purveyors of British news; news cannot be British or American--it is an international commodity.” The German D.N.B. has, of course, been liquidated. So has Japan’s Domei. An American-sponsored German Agency, D.A.N.A., has been set up in U.S.-occupied Germany with favorable competitive advantages as against the British and French agencies. U. S. Treasury funds have been used openly in the battle for news control of Austria and other countries. In Japan, under exclusive American occupation, American news dictatorship is assured. With Britain restricted to Southeast Asia, the whole Far East is rapidly becoming an American private preserve. And not even the limits of the thinly-concealed modern American empire provide boundaries for the American news empire. Only the Soviet Union and the new Eastern European democracies, together with the anti-imperialist forces within the dominated territories, stand in the way of complete global sway by the new empire-aspirant and its news monopoly. Against them, the “free press” monopolists are mobilizing the blackmail batteries of atomic diplomacy. “It is unthinkable,” declares Kent Cooper, “that the peace will not be dictated by America and Britain and that there should not be included in its terms the principles affecting the press as I have outlined them.” _Chapter VI_ RESPONSIBILITY--A CHALLENGE TO THE PRESS If World War I was a complex struggle for redivision of the world between two imperialist groups, World War II was still more complicated. An effective alliance of all forces opposed to German-Japanese enslavement of the world was achieved. Yet behind this alignment a good many battles were fought for imperialist advantage.